Pop Art
'Pop Art ' This essay will be describing pop art as well as looking at the origins and influences; it will also be looking at how the visual art movement challenged tradition. As well as looking at a number of pop artists and some of their art work, showing the concepts and practical application, as well as the themes they have chosen and why. Pop art is often described as being very kitsch. The work gathered here will be looking at some of the art critiques response to kitsch like Clement Greenburg for instance, and will be debating the question. Was “kitsch” in general mechanically produced art in the height of capitalism during the industrial revolution? Have the concepts and works of art enriched the cultures of the world today? Finishing with a conclusion, reflecting on the opinions of the theorists and critics in the 19th and 20th century, looking at the qualities of some of the pop art and the concepts behind the movement. Here is a quotation from Tilman Osterwold, 2007, Pop Art, P11 describing the themes of pop art “The “myths of everyday life” which surface in consumer culture, in the mass media and in the euphoria surrounding technology are ambivalent: they express the general optimism of the construction, but also the general syndrome of decay; a belief in progress, but also a fear of disaster – they stand for both dreams and traumas, luxury and poverty. Civilization has come to feel the nightmare of its own vulnerability and destruction. The total availability of consumer goods has turned into the waste-disposal problem of a” throw away” society in which the desires and fates of the individuals disappear in the masses.” Pop art used mass produced commodities of everyday life which were described as part of popular culture, sometimes combining or isolating the objects to send a message which provoked contemplation. Common commodities’ like Campbell’s soup by Andy Warhol for example, comic books, advertisements, iconic film stars. Through using everyday images the art had a sense of irony and humour as well as being romantic and sentimental and very contemporary. The precursor of the pop art movement was founded in London in 1952, with the beginning of the Independent Group which comprised of young painters, sculptures, architects and critics. Two members of this group, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi helped to start the movement, at the inaugural meeting Paolozzi presented a lecture using a series of collages that he had collected in his time in Paris, which was titled “Bunk!” The material comprised of objects he found such as, magazine covers, comic book characters, advertising and mass produced graphics that represented some of the American popular culture. One of the collages shows the first use of the word pop appearing in the smoke coming from the barrel of a revolver which is shown below. This collage is considered to be the “standard bearer” of pop art, from this point, many images of design in art followed. “Paolozzi was the only British artist to have started working with collages made up from comic strips, magazine clippings, commercial imagery and other trivia as early as 1947. (Tilman Osterwold, 2007, Pop Art, p64.) Pop Art emerged in Britain in the mid 1950s and moved to America in the late 1950s. Pop art did spread over Europe and as far as China, but the two countries to be concentrated on here are America and Britain, because the influences of the two countries reflected different qualities that they combined across the sea. Although the movement started in Britain a lot of pop art in this country was based on images of American popular culture, buying into the American dream. The British pop art movement observed American popular culture in an idealistic way, whereas in America, people were interested in culture based on life actually living in the here and now. The British were fascinated with American culture through graphics that represented American life through advertising and magazine covers. Britain viewed American culture as being romantic and glamorous with the suggestion of optimism. With this being the time of post war Britain people looked overseas to America for the glamour and escapism of the wartime hardships people had endured over recent years. With the introduction of television and cinema becoming mainstream people switched onto the American commercial World, such as Hollywood for instance. Some of the early examples of this post war art movement which could be described as “Proto – Pop Art” date back to the 1920s. Artists such as Charles Demuth, Stuart Davis, and Gerald Murthy. The artists produced paintings of American mass produced products some of which were incorporated into advertising. Earlier forms of pop art are evident in Synthetic cubism with artists such as Picasso placing three dimensional everyday objects onto the canvas, as well as incorporating news print into some of the paintings. Pop art has also been influenced by Dadaism with a number of dada artists moving into the new movement. The two movements are similar in a number of ways, both movements used everyday objects and political images as collages to provoke thought using the same values, the movements were considered rebels against traditional values and thought of as both being very kitsch. Some seeing pop art as an extension of Dadaism. Pop art had arrived through a reaction to Abstract Expressionism which was the first great American Art movement; some of the qualities were incorporated into pop art and shared in common their belief of possibilities for art. “Richard Hamilton’s collage “just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” was initially conceived as a poster and catalogue for the Independent Group’s 1956 exhibition “This is tomorrow”, staged at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London”. (David McCarthy, 2000, Movement in Modern Art, Pop Art, p6). He then goes on to say; “The question posed by Hamilton was easy enough to answer. Today, homes are different and appealing because recent technologies, including talking films, television and reel to reel tape recorders, offered escape inside and outside the home, while domestic conveniences such as a vacuum cleaners and tinned ham freed consumers to pursue more hedonistic pleasures.” (David McCarthy, 2000, Movement in Modern Art, Pop Art, p6) ”Blake I used the devise of looking both down and across at the picture mostly for convenience – if you are painting a sheet of paper on the ground with someone standing next to it, perspective is going to be involved and it’s going to be difficult. The devise I used gives a very odd effect – you look straight across at the ground yet perspective is implied in certain places.” (Peter Blake, Natalie Rudd, 2003 Tate Publishing, p20) Peter Blake is one of the most influential English artists in Britain today, probably best known for his design for the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band album. Peter Blake is considered a vital contributor to the emergence of Pop Art in Britain, he was fascinated with popular music, film and sport and incorporated this in his work. “Melville, on the Balcony, started when he was 23 and finished two years later, remains one of the most complex and successful studies in flat space that has been achieved in our time...His brilliant renewal of the traditional virtues of the painting is reclaiming ground that modern art has abandoned. His paintings are for the people. 1969” (Peter Blake, Natalie Rudd, 2003 Tate Publishing, p20) A recent article (Anon 2010) from; Abusters, Journal of the mental environment. The post- modernism issue. March/April 2010. #88 Volume 18 Number 2. Stated that....“Warhol’s paint – by – number landscape is a postmodern skewering of just about everything: landscape traditions, the vaunted notion of the artist as being gifted and unique creator and a raft of bourgeois values – including the sentimentalizing of pastoral scenes such as this. The DIY landscape is about mass – produced imagery and mass consumption. Like Warhol’s public persona, it is void of feeling and subjectivity.” This image is typical of Andy Warhol screen prints, repeating the image multiple times to make the image seems meaningless and void of emotion. Warhol’s art was mass produced and he admits to churning out as many images in a day as possible, sometimes creating up to a thousand works. Warhol was quintessentially a man of the time producing common images which again were typical of the age, often representing consumerism as well as being a large part of it in the art world. Here is a quotation from (Tilman Osterwold, 2007, Pop Art, P11) “Andy Warhol’s series of Marilyn’s, produced in 1962 after her death, reveal the in- authenticity of her image by repeating her face - or lips- in rows. He translates the manipulability and inflationary character of her image into a mechanical form containing apparently meaningless pictures.” He then goes on to explain the methods involved in the works. “ Using the silkscreen technique, he arranges some design or other of Monroe, a well known photograph, in apparent random sequence, and then transfers them onto a canvas in a slipshod, slovenly, average sort of way. Warhol turns the stereotyped persona of the star, who is forced to reproduce herself constantly in staged scenes and settings, into a series of identical images, merely touching up her face with various colour nuances. The garish lack of subtlety of her make-up relies on her expected pose-a “mask” which the viewer is invited to identify with and imitate.” (Tilman Osterwold, 2007, Pop Art, P11) As was stated earlier pop art has often been described as being very “Kitsch”, the word originates from Germany which is a derogatory description of Art first used in the 19th century. “"kitsch" first gained common usage in the jargon of Munich art dealers to designate "cheap artistic stuff" in the 1860s and 70s. By the first decades of the twentieth century, the term had caught on internationally. Kitsch gained theoretical momentum in the early to mid-twentieth century, when utilized to describe both objects and a way of life brought on by the urbanization and mass-production of the industrial revolution. Thus, kitsch possessed aesthetic as well as political implications, informing debates about mass culture and the growing commercialization of society.” (Whitney Rugg (2002), Department of Art History University of Chicago, Theories of Media, keywords glossary, kitsch) The bourgeoisie bought into kitsch who were usually people that had climbed the social ladder through education and wealth. They generally had enough money to sample the art culture, buying imitations and cheap mass produced paintings of low quality to try and improve their social status. Kitsch is sentimental and glamorous using images that appealed to the masses, many critics say that the work was inferior and merely tries to emulate real art. One of the important critics of the 1930’s was Clement Greenburg who wrote a ground breaking essay on “ Avant - Garde and Kitsch “describing avant- garde as being the higher level of art and kitsch as being the lower, showing the two movements in a juxtaposition. Here is a quotation from Greenburg’s essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch.....“The peasants who settled in the cities as proletariat and petty bourgeois learned to read and write for the sake of efficiency, but they did not win the leisure and comfort necessary for the enjoyment of the city’s traditional culture. .”(Avant-Garde and Kitsch, Clement Greenberg). He then goes on to explain, “ Losing, nevertheless, their taste for the folk culture whose background was the countryside, and discovering a new capacity for boredom at the same time, the new urban masses set up a pressure on society to provide them with a kind of culture fit for their own consumption. To fill the demand of the new market, a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some kind can provide.”(Avant-Garde and Kitsch, Clement Greenberg). Kitsch broke the boundaries of many of the traditionalists and critics preconceptions of what art should be and what was acceptable in the art world. Clement Greenburg does later reject the majority of the essay; however the essay holds its own as being an important theoretical writing so far as describing modernism in the 20th century. Pop art has three major distinguishing characteristics. Firstly it is both figurative and realist, something that avant-garde art had not been since its very beginnings with Courbet’s Realism. “ In 1861 Courbet published a manifesto of Realism in the Paris “Courier du Dimanche” in which he stated that for an artist the practise of art should involve ‘bringing to bear his faculties on the ideas and objects of the period in which he lives’. Six years earlier he had stated the same thing in more personal terms in the short manifesto attached to the catalogue of his 1855 exhibition: ‘To know in order to be able to do, that was my thought. To be in a position to translate the habits, the appearance of the time...in a word, to make a living art, that is the aim.’ This vitally important idea that artists must deal with the contemporary world and with life as well as with art is also the basis of pop art. Just over a century after Courbet’s manifesto, Roy Lichtenstein, one of the creators of pop art in America, told an interviewer: ‘Outside is the world; it’s there. Pop art looks out into the World.” (Modern Art Impressionism to Post – Modernism Edited by David Britt Thames & Hudson Chapter 7 Simon Wilson p305) Gustave Courbet who led the realist movement in France in the 19th century was one of the first theorists and painters of avant- garde, whose work has been admired by many and considered as one of the best painters in France of that time. Courbet was breaking a lot of boundaries in the art world, which might have even been described as kitsch, so far as being on the edge of what traditionalists considered acceptable. With the expansion of the industrial age there was greater demand for work in the cities and towns through a technological breakthrough. The world was changing fast and rural people headed for work in the suburbs where there was more demand for employees. This was an exciting time, the world was changing and so were the demands of the people, middle class people like the bourgeoisie could now afford some of the luxuries of life, which were far more obtainable. Through the industrial age came mass production, advertising to the masses through newspapers and magazines. The demand for people to be educated became higher through the industrial revolution. As well as schools being more available due to the demographic shift, almost anybody could now access reading material whereas before this was generally restricted to the more privileged. This was the start of Consumerism in a throwaway society. Through advertising and news, people could see famous art works and places that before they could only imagine, this changed art forever. “Our fine arts were developed; their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the idea and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the beautiful. Quoted from Paul Valery, *Aesthetics*, “The Conquest of Ubiquity,” translated by Ralph Manheim, p 225. Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, New York, 1964). He then goes on to say “In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”(Quoted from Paul Valery, *Aesthetics*, “The Conquest of Ubiquity,” translated by Ralph Manheim, p 225. Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, New York, 1964.) Through mass consumerism famous works of art could be printed and mass produced all over the world, through this the images lost their cult value, which sometimes made the images less powerful to the observer when actually viewing the original, this did not however detract from the price of the original merely making it more sought after. A quotation from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, 2008, P 148 says; “Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream. Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable. This essay has briefly described the effects of industrialisation in the production of kitsch using quotes from a number of theorists and critics, for example, Clement Greenburg and John Berger describing the changes of the world through technological breakthroughs. Through these changes came the introduction to mass produced art work, everybody could now see what the Mona Lisa looked like. Art would never be same again; some feared this would detract from the cult status of the original piece. Through the increase of advertising and design, images of people’s everyday lives, art became design, and design became art. Many critics opposed kitsch art, the Clement Greenberg essay refers to avant-garde and kitsch as being in juxtaposition, Kitsch being the lower grade of art. “The alternative to Picasso is not Michelangelo, but kitsch. In the second place, neither in backward Russia nor in the advanced West do the masses prefer kitsch simply because their governments condition them toward it.” ( Avant-Garde and Kitsch by Clement Greenburg) Earlier I used a quote from Gustav Courbet’s manifesto in 1861 where he quite clearly states that artists should be dealing with translating the habits and the appearance of the time, Courbet was one of the first theorists and painters of the avant- garde movement and has influenced many artists like Monet for example. It seems ironic that one of the leaders of the avant- garde movement might have these views which later might have later been thought of as being kitsch. As mentioned earlier pop art was a reaction to Abstract Expressionism; some of the qualities are evident in the new movement especially in the large canvasses. Pop art was also thought by many to be an extension of Dadaism as well as being influenced by earlier movements like Cubism. A number of the famous names in pop art for example Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton came from commercial design backgrounds and this is evident in the style and the concepts behind the images they produced. Pop art was part of popular culture through advertising, posters, and album covers, for example, I have already mentioned Peter Blake’s Beatle’s cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band using images of the times. The direct relationship between art and design and commercialism had never been more evident, Hamilton’s collage “Just what is it that makes today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing? was originally an advertisement for the Independent Group’s 1956 exhibition “This is Tomorrow” which probably is the most famous image Hamilton has produced. Andy Warhol’s landscape 1962 “Do it yourself” showed the mass consumption of the times which is evident in his own workshop producing as many as a thousand images a day. Peter Blake’s “On the Balcony” for example incorporated traditional styles of painting using contemporary concepts to produce images of popular culture. Pop art is considered by many to be the art movement that precedes “Postmodern art” as well as some of the images being early examples of “Postmodern Art”, with many of the artists I have mentioned earlier which have merged into the new movement. A movement which popularises art for the masses by using familiar images produced by both mechanical means and time- honoured traditional methods. John Lister 27/04/10 Bibliography · Benjamin W, (2008), quoted from Valery P, Aesthetics, “The conquest of Ubiquity”, translated by Manheim, R (1964), p225. In the essay by Walter Benjamin “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he uses quotations from Paul Valery. Valery was a French poet, essayist and philosopher in the 19th century, who wrote many essays and aphorisms (original thoughts) on art. The quotation used demonstrates how demographic and political factors combined with technological developments in consumerism influenced the art world. Using this quotation shows the older theorist’s views which still pertinent today · Berger J, (2008) Ways of seeing 2nd edition, p:148 The book describes how people are influenced in seeing art and how people view beauty through taste, class and gender and world around. The ethos behind this book derives from Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. The book originally accompanied the television series which was broadcast in 1972 when the book was first published. The quotation I have used describes publicity in the life of culture, the relationship between capitalism and art and the effects of this occurring. John Berger is one of the most influential intellectuals of our time, his writing is often used in college texts, and his books have reached high acclaim in the academic world. Through using quotations from John Berger it has enforced other quotations I have used from Walter Benjamin’s essay as well as other points made in the essay. · Greenberg C (1939) Avant-garde and kitsch, part II (2 pieces) In the essay Greenberg describes the effects of the industrial revolution, and compares Avant-Garde and Kitsch as being the higher and lower forms of art. The quotations by Greenberg describe the causes and his definition of kitsch which pop art is often thought of as being. Through using these quotations it enables good cause for debate, through looking at other theorists of the day and their opinions like Gustave Courbet. This essay by Clement Greenberg made his name as an art critic, before that he graduated from Syracuse University. · Hedges C, (2010) Adbusters, Journal of the mental environment, #88 Volume 18 Number 2, March/April 2010, p:28 This magazine looks at the history of art leading up to modern and postmodern art. There was a particularly interesting article covering Andy Warhol’s, Do it Yourself (Landscape) which describes the painting and what the image represents, which has recently been published. The article was written by Chris Hedges who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School. This has been included in the essay to show a recent opinion of Warhol’s work which adds interest and depth to the essay. · McCarthy, D (2000) Movement in Modern Art, Pop Art, p: 6 This book describes the pop art movement, looking at the themes and the concepts behind the work, looking at the history of the movement and a number of artists. The paragraph used describes an early example of Richard Hamilton’s work in a clear and precise way which conveyed the general consensus of people assumptions of what the image and title of the image represents. The Author David McCarthy is an Associate Professor of History of Art at Rhodes College, Memphis. · Osterwold T, (2007) Pop Art 6th edition, p11. This book is an explanation and a showcase of pop art, showing many images of the artists work as well as showing the themes and the concepts behind them. The extract I have used describes Andy Warhol’s images of Marilyn Monroe, in a clear and precise way that shows what the images represent and how he achieved it. The author Tilman Osterwold studied art History and obtained a PHD in the subject in 1969 and taught at university for a number of years. · Rudd N, (2007) Peter Blake 2nd edition, p19 This book describes Peter Blake’s life and works of art up to present day showing the qualities in his work and some of his own quotations describing his work. The quotations used describe one of the pictures shown in the essay from Peter Blake and Melville showing their thoughts on the painting. I have shown these quotations to add interest and to show the artist’s ideas behind the painting as well as Melville’s educated opinion of his Blake work. · Rugg W, (2002),The University of Chicago, Theories of media, keywords glossary, kitsch, available from http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/kitsch.htm 25/04/2010 From above article, the essay has a solid source of the definition of kitsch, from a well educated graduate of art history. This underlines and bolsters what has been mentioned in the description of kitsch. · Wilson S, (2002) Pop, edited by Britt D, Modern Art Impressionism to Post – Modernism 5th edition, p: 305 This book covers every major development in the visual arts, from Impressionism to Post-Modernism. This book was particularly interesting and useful, the quotations used are from Gustave Courbet’s manifesto which was a good opening for a discussion, debating his theories on one hand, the importance of art reflecting the times we live in through objects in our lives (Courbet being one of the pioneers of the Avant – Garde). On the other hand looking at Clement Greenburg’s essay Avant- Garde and Kitsch refers to these qualities as being kitsch, which he describes as being the lower form of art. John Lister 27/04/10